1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document search device, an image forming apparatus, and a document search system.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to improve efficiency in creating a new document with word processing software on a computer, it is important to find and reuse a similar document which was made in the past. However, finding a document from among many files stored in a computer hard disk or a network storage is a time consuming job, and sometimes, a user fails to find the document that the user is looking for even though the user believes that the document should be stored somewhere in the hard disk.
Various document search technology has been developed to search the document stored in a storage apparatus. For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H7-175825 (hereinafter referred to as JP '825) discloses a document search and display method that aims to improve convenience in document searching and displaying. A document search device of JP '825 is targeted for searching structured documents, and takes advantage of structural information of the documents to display a part of the document in an attempt to improve the convenience in displaying the search results.
The document search device of JP '825 improves the convenience in displaying the search result, for example, by allowing the user to see a layout display of the search result. But the document search device of JP '825 still places a great burden on the user in finding a document of interest from among many items listed in the search results and in finally determining that the document of interest does not exist.